How I Live Now

by Meg Rosoff

Paperback, 2006

Status

Available

Call number

823.92

Genres

Young Adult

All Topics

Fiction

Publication

Wendy Lamb Books (2006), Edition: Reprint, 194 pages

Description

Historical Fiction. Young Adult Fiction. Young Adult Literature. HTML:"Every war has turning points and every person too." Fifteen-year-old Daisy is sent from Manhattan to England to visit her aunt and cousins she's never met: three boys near her age, and their little sister. Her aunt goes away on business soon after Daisy arrives. The next day bombs go off as London is attacked and occupied by an unnamed enemy. As power fails, and systems fail, the farm becomes more isolated. Despite the war, it's a kind of Eden, with no adults in charge and no rules, a place where Daisy's uncanny bond with her cousins grows into something rare and extraordinary. But the war is everywhere, and Daisy and her cousins must lead each other into a world that is unknown in the scariest, most elemental way. A riveting and astonishing story. From the Hardcover edition..… (more)

Media reviews

Horn Book

Fifteen-year-old Daisy, an anorexic, acerbic New Yorker, falls instantly in love with her English cousins' farm and with her English cousin Edmond. Idyllic love story abruptly becomes horrific survival tale when an unnamed enemy power invades the country. A captivating and deeply satisfying first

novel. Review 9/04. "How I Live Now." The Horn Book Magazine Jan.-Feb. 2005: 16.

Show Less

User reviews

LibraryThing member miyurose

This YA story of children left to fend for themselves after the outbreak of a war has a distinct post-apocalyptic feel to it. I think this is mostly due to the rural countryside setting, lack of adults, and the “faceless” enemy. You never find out what really happens here other than The

Occupation, but that’s secondary to the story of Daisy and her cousins and their struggle to survive.

Daisy is the narrator here, and the writing style is true to the uncertain voice of a teenager — the slightly rambling, run-on sentences and narrow worldview are spot on. I liked Daisy, even though she starts out pretty selfish and more than slightly screwed-up. By the end of the story she is a completely different person, but the world is also a completely different place.

I think this story had the potential to be too much — too horrific, too gory, too heroic, too sad, too uncomfortable, too unbelievable. Instead, it was just right.

Show Less

24 more

LibraryThing member librarymeg

I found this book to be difficult to enjoy, at first, because of the author's unusual writing style. Meg Rosoff incorporates the dialogue seamlessly in with the narrative, which at times could be confusing. She also employs capitalization to point out Important Phrases. After about twenty or thirty

pages, though, it was less noticeable and I began to enjoy the story. The main character, Daisy, flies in to London to visit her cousins, who she's never met, and to get away from her father and pregnant stepmother. At first she's unsure what to make of her unusual cousins, who all seem to have special gifts. Isaac seems to be able to communicate with animals, Edmond always knows what she's thinking, and she sees Piper as an ethereal wood-nymph. She's soon as entranced with them as everyone else seems to be, and with her aunt out of the country trying to avert a war, the children live a carefree life without adult interference. This lifestyle continues for a short time until England is invaded and occupied by a terrorist army. Now the children must cope with rations, shortages, being separated, and all the horrific realities of modern warfare. The story undergoes a sharp change in tone when the occupation begins, going from lighthearted and fun to dark and desperate in just a few chapters. I found this sudden change to be very effective in showing how abruptly people's lives can change in a war. Some of the scenes are graphic and disturbing, but the story overall is a great representation of (relatively) ordinary people attempting to survive under very challenging circumstances. I would highly recommend this book to teens interested in life during a war, or in terrorism in general.

Show Less

LibraryThing member baachan

In Meg Rosoff's novel, an American teen named Daisy is sent to England to live with her aunt and cousins when her stepmother is about to give birth. Her aunt leaves on a business trip to Oslo and a war breaks out, leaving Daisy and her cousins stranded without any adults in their lives. They

survive undisturbed, for a time. But when they are discovered, they are separated and survival become more difficult. This novel is about love, survival, and youthful stubbornness, or maybe you'd call it resilience. For a teen novel, this is surprisingly good! Rosoff's narrative style is snappy, dry, and a bit self-deprecating. It works. I will say that while Daisy is anorexic--though it's never explicitly diagnosed, she only talks about how little she eats, how thin she is, etc.--the anorexia isn't the focus of the story. Instead, it plays into the central theme of "hunger" in the story. And, Daisy regains her "appetite" due to the events of the war. My one critique of the narrative comes toward the end. The character is suddenly whisked out of war-ridden England, sent back to New York and her father, and six years pass. And there, I really lost complete track of the plot. The passage of time and the abruptness with which the narrator is taken out of England, sent home to New York, and then returns--six years later--to England was jolting and detracted from what had been a believable story, up to that point. But while I take issue with the suddenness of the plot shift, I loved that the ending was not overly simplistic. It wasn't the perfect happy ending, but it was a satisfying ending. I appreciated that Rosoff felt her readers could handle this type of ending, a sort of imperfect, bittersweet ending. I really do think that Rosoff managed what teen authors really aim to do--write a compelling novel that speaks to teens on their cognitive level. "Recommended for purchase" for public library teen collections, as well as for high school libraries. [I really wish that I had Anne Carroll Moore's rubber stamp.] Maybe Rosoff's approach is what I like so much--she appeals to her audience as readers, not as teens.

Show Less

LibraryThing member Fluffyblue

This is a short book, which took me just over a day to read in dribs and drabs.

The writing didn't grab me as much as I wanted it too. I'm not sure if I struggled a little bit with the style or just the content, but it's safe to say it was an interesting premise. It also made me think about what it

would be like to live through a war in these modern times.

I thought Daisy was a very strong character, both in terms of who she was and what she did for the family. I was quite pleased with the ending (although saddened for obviously reasons - without revealing the plot!).

On the whole a good book, which I will probably need to digest in my mind for a few days now.

Show Less

LibraryThing member francescadefreitas

I've waited a few days after reading this and I still can't muster up a review. This book was astonishing - astonishing and good. I hadn't read any reviews, so I came to it with no background, and the terrain kept on shifting - when Daisy arrives in the UK, I thought is was going to be a family

story, and I was enjoying the group living under the benign neglect of Aunt Penn. A dusting of fantasy appeared with the hinted telepathy of her cousins. Then I thought it was going to be a romance, with a distant backdrop of war to add tension. Then all hell broke loose.
I enjoyed every moment of this, Daisy's descriptions were spot on, and her change from guarded city girl, to a member of a family, to her cousin's protector was heart-rending to experience. Like John Marsden's Tomorrow series, this places a conflict on familiar home turf, and turns a comfortable landscape terrifying and alien is a very effective way to show the horror of war.
Daisy's observations of tiny details brings an intensity - when a man is shot, it feels like you are seeing it in slow motion - not the gore, but the fact that he is a human being with a life, and feelings, and it is all coming to an end.
I'd give this book to someone looking for an edgier story, someone interested in family secrets, stories of surviving wars, or war time romances.

Show Less

LibraryThing member sandpiper

Meg arrives from the States to stay with her cousins and her aunt in England. They live an idyllic life on a farm in the countryside, with animals, a veg garden, a river in which to swim and catch fish. Aunt Penn leaves for a few days to present a lecture in Oslo, and the children have the farm to

themselves. All sound a bit Enid Blyton so far? I get the feeling that Meg Rosoff perhaps intended the start of the book to seem so perfect, lost in an innocent age (even though it is set in the current day), because things soon change - for both good and bad.

I just can't say a lot more without giving away the story, so I'm not going to go into any specifics. This story was beautiful, magical, terrible and heartbreaking.

Show Less

LibraryThing member Lisa2013

This book had been languishing on my to read list for a long time. By the time I got to it I got the movie tie in edition. The average rating for this book is low and my Goodreads friends are all over the place with this one. I was hesitant to read it because I want all my books to be 5 or 4 star

worthy. The description has so much that appealed to me though and it was available for borrowing and had been sitting in my apartment for a while and was short and looked as though it would be a fast read so I decided to try it.

I liked it. I don’t think it was a great book but I found it kind of addictive. I loved the complexity of the main character/narrator and how I could dislike her and like her at the same time. This story had a lot of what I love in books: dystopian, adventure, love, young characters, a young character taking care of an even younger character, people learning to be self-sufficient, trauma and mental illnesses. I was not expecting/remembering about the speculative fiction paranormal aspect but it was a relatively minor part of the narrative and I enjoyed it.

3-1/2 stars

Show Less

LibraryThing member faerielibrarian

I enjoyed this book, it was a quick read and it really took me by surprise. The chapters were short and I feel its style, language and timing could be enjoyed by avid readers and reluctant readers. It had only two weaknesses for me, I was at first bothered by the “war” and was not easily

transported entirely into the world (possibly because I just read The Book Thief which was a historical fiction). I also was uncomfortable by the way they dealt with the incestuous affair between Daisy and Edmond and that it was accepted as normal. While I do recognize this can be a normal occurrence, I was not drawn in to their love affair. I loved the language it was written in and feel it could appeal to teens of all ages. I especially loved the use of capitalization, making the meaning of these words and the narrator’s voice more personal. I also loved the way it approached heavy topics like anorexia and the ‘mushroom incident’. It had some disturbing images of death but nothing that I felt a parent or younger teen could be upset by. I feel this book would appeal more to girls than boys. I would also recommend it to teens who like to read about apocalyptic situations. It is also a good “short book” recommendation for those last minute book reports. Another good point to know in making a good match with this book is that it is a good example of a strong female character.

Show Less

LibraryThing member hockeycrew

In the aftermath of recemt terrorist attacks, those of us who are young enough (and geographically situated) to have lived in peaceful nations our whole lives may wonder: what if war touched my country. In this book, set in the near future, 15 year old anorexic Daisy is sent to live with her

cousins in England. War breaks out while her aunt is overseas and the children are left to their own devices. The children live in a Utopia of their making until soldiers seperate them. Daisy and her youngest cousin, Piper, get sent to a farm across the country from the boys. Daisy, who has started an incestous relationship with her cousin, is desperate to be reunited with her family.

This is a realistic look at how war could affect residents of well-to-do nations. Children who not only always had food on the table, but also had all the modern of convieniences, cars, cell phones, e-mails and electricity. The passages about war seem very realistic to me. Other very gripping themes in this story are Daisy's incestous relationship with her cousin, her severe eating disorder and her dislike for her step mother.

I greatly enjoyed this book but would recommend it mostly for older teen and adults who can understand the mature theme of the novel.

Show Less

LibraryThing member tim_halpin

This book is something new. That's why I enjoyed it so much. There's been a lot of apparently similar books coming out recently, post-apocalyptic world with a female protagonist and a forbidden love interest, and most of them are pretty interchangeable, sentimental, rammed full of clichés, hammy

phrases and terrible dialogue.

But not this one. It's interested in so much more than just Mills and Boon romance with a few scratches on the cheek. Daisy, the main character, is self-critical and ironical in her narration, especially when dealing with her own issues, which she doesn't let overpower the story - it doesn't all become about her. That said, there's a war going on and she hardly seems to notice. Does this strike you as strange? Or familiar?

The descriptions of the English countryside are remarkably compelling and, maybe more surprisingly, accurate. Not many people stop to notice hedgerows in this sort of book. You wouldn't catch Katniss Everdeen noticing the smell of the grass, or the feeling of insect bites on her face (not unless they were CRAZY GENETICALLY MODIFIED insects, anyway). But she doesn't wax lyrical about nature, she just notices it, as any normal human being would. The trees are more than just the setting for the action - they're really there.

What I particularly love about this book are the unresolved issues. Doesn't anyone care about incest these days? And what's going on with the telepathy? Rosoff doesn't feel the need to explain everything to death, she lets you decide for yourself, and forces you to think. That's why the book stays with you so much, because you've had to think about it. And it's worth it!

Show Less

LibraryThing member epence

This remarkable book, justly shortlisted for the Guardian fiction prize, tells Daisy's story - a laconic and cynical 15-year-old New Yorker who is summarily dispatched to her eccentric Aunt and cousins in the depths of rural England at the behest of her loathed step-mother. She has retreated into

anorexia - as a weapon against her father and his new wife and as a means of keeping control of what is happening to her. All semblance of control on any level vanishes when her Aunt is called to Oslo to try to prevent the disintegration of world peace and Daisy begins a sexual relationship with her 14-year-old cousin Edmond. This attachment is so strong that they are able to communicate in an almost telepathic way - this is both their salvation and their downfall when war breaks out. At first the disruption merely isolates and cements the idyll but when their home is requistioned by the armed forces they are all separated and can only try to survive and find each other again. Edmond is unable to ignore the thoughts of those in distress and this brings about his breakdown, through which he can only think of returning to the family home to find Daisy. Daisy and her cousin Piper endure much horror and privation but their arrival at the family home - two days before Edmond's - is shattered by Daisy's father's immediate recall of her to New York. The book ends with enormous poignancy when, six years on, Daisy is eventually able to return and try to effect some restoration of the broken Edmond and the ashes of their relationship. The narrative so moves the reader because it is always filtered through Daisy's thoughts and observations, leaving clues to be picked up which then vividly colour events and interpretations in an uncluttered yet often harrowing way. The final section of the book sees the only use of direct speech, thus powerfully delineating past and present and leaving readers to draw their own conclusions about the future. Category: 14+ Secondary/Adult. Rating: ***** (Unmissable). ...., Penguin, 186pp, D12.99 hbk. Ages 14 to adult.
(Val Randall (Books for Keeps No. 149, November 2004))

Won: White Ravens Award

Show Less

LibraryThing member mbklibrary

I completely understand why this book won the Printz Award. It was shocking, raw, optimistic, hopeful, and unabashedly honest. It truly told the story from Daisy's perspective and that of teens. Where many books are about teens, this one made you feel as if you were in the mind of one. Rosoff has

an amazing ability to tell the story without having to go into minute detail. When the children are caught in the midst of war, you can feel the emotion of what's happening without Rosoff having to go into gory details. I didn't like Daisy, not in the beginning and not in the end, but I did respect her, and she certainly grew up quite a bit throughout the novel. The feelings about the book are still percolating. The book and much of its content made me uncomfortable , it was beautifully written and certainly something that should be read.

Show Less

LibraryThing member Jennie_103

Well I wouldn't say this book was entirely as good as all the hype, however I did enjoy it. There's the timeless technique of getting rid of the adults along with removing all the usual social structure but then I gets more dark than children's fiction normally goes. The children are separated and

the book focuses on the story of Piper and her American cousin Daisy. Daisy is quite a realistic character you can emphathise with but Piper is this spiritual perfect dream child which makes her difficult to like at times. It's written in a very odd style too. Saying all that though, I would agree that it is compelling.

Show Less

LibraryThing member LitChick26

Story follows the rebellious and independent teenager, Daisy, as she battles through the troubles of war. As the story progresses, Daisy falls in love with her cousin, Edmond. By the end of the story, Daisy has matured and gained much strength. I loved this book because it was written like Daisy

wrote it herself. She never held back on what she felt or the truth of what was really going on. Very powerful and extremely emotional. One of my new favorite books!

Show Less

LibraryThing member LibraryLou

This book could be written in any time or place, it is not clear at first when it is set. It tells the story of a group of teenagers that find themselves in the middle of a war they do not understand.
A coming of age story, it also tackles the taboo subject of how you do not choose who you fall in

love with...

Show Less

LibraryThing member Lindsayg

I really like this one. I guess a lot of people were grossed out by the incest. For whatever reason it didn't bother me. They were cousins, they didn't meet until they were teens, it doesn't seem so disgusting to me. Plus it was wartime, people do strange things. All in all I thought it was

beautifully written and I really cared about the characters.

Show Less

LibraryThing member WhitneyD

"How I Live Now" is the story of Daisy, a fifteen year old girl who is sent to live with her Aunt and cousins in London. Her father married a woman who did not like Daisy, so she had Daisy's father send her away. Even though she is unsure at first of her new home and how she will like it there, she

soon finds a happiness that she has never known. She mostly finds this in her cousin, Edmond, who she falls in love with. They are very passionate about one another, but they are separated when war strikes. Six years pass and they have been apart, but they still love each other. However, he is not the same. They have to work on their relationship, but they find happiness with each other.

One teaching connection I found in this book is her writing style. This book would be a very good example of stream of consciousness writing. It is a different form for students to read, so it would be a good book to read that shows the diversity of writing. I also think this book could be attached to a history lesson. It is interesting to see the effects of war on particular people. This book can be very diverse in a classroom.

I absolutley loved reading this book. It was a very different book to read because of how it is written. I loved her story and characters. I do not know if this book is appropriate for the classroom because of some of the content, but I would definitley recommend it for pleasure reading.

Show Less

LibraryThing member herschelian

Daisy is a funky 15 yr old anorexic from NY, sent to spend summer with her English aunt and cousins. There she falls in love with Edmond one of her cousins and they embark on an intense sexual and emotional relationship. Daisy had arrived just before war with an unnamed aggressor begins and England

is occupied and communications the outside world are cut off. Her aunt had gone to a Peace conference in Oslo and so the six children are left to their own devices in the countryside. Eventually they are all swept up in the chaos of war, and have to live on their wits to survive.
The book won the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize 2004.

Show Less

LibraryThing member SamuelW

There is really only one way to win a prize like the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize: to be different – and How I Live Now is one of the most different books I have ever read. Set in modern times, it nevertheless has a quaint, early 20th century feel, and the narration is like no other

narration on earth – devoid of quotation marks, with frequent Capitalised Phrases and even occasional tense switching. The result is quite remarkable – it really feels as though the reader is in a room with Daisy the teenage girl, chatting comfortably about the events of the summer. Funnily enough, even despite the unique style, this book is wonderfully easy to read, flowing better than most books written in regular style.

As a tale of children battling their way through a harsh war, How I Live Now ranks superbly. At the beginning, there is an air of ‘there might be a war on but we don’t care’, but then as the novel progresses, and the children are drawn deeper into the conflict, the tone becomes gradually more despairing and tortured. This book succeeds where Tomorrow When the War Began failed – it will tear readers’ hearts out with a tale of children struggling for survival that is subtly different from any other survival story. When it comes to survival stories, I am usually incredibly cold and unsympathetic; bored out of my skull with ‘oh, poor, poor me’ tales of children in war-torn poverty with nothing to eat, where the plot is a meaningless ramble of pitiful struggles and I can relate to the characters about as much as I can relate to a wooden spoon. It would have been so easy for Rosoff to fall into the trap of writing a book like this – but to her immense credit, she hasn’t, and for this reason alone, I would read How I Live Now five times over. It may not be a fast-paced action thriller, but it held my attention effortlessly.

Despite winning a children’s fiction prize, however, this wonderful book is definitely not for young children. I would certainly never give it to anyone under the age of thirteen – amongst other things, it deals with incest, smoking, and occasional scenes of high-level blood and gore.

A truly unforgettable achievement; How I Live Now is an exquisite personal journey that looks at the world through very different eyes. Recommended for book-lovers who think they’ve seen everything.

Show Less

LibraryThing member cindywho

This is a war time novel for young adults set in the near future. 15 year old New Yorker Daisy is sent off to relatives in England just in time for the borders to close. At first she enjoys unsupervised life with her cousins, but the war intrudes more and more upon their lives. The identity of the

occupying force is never disclosed which leaves a bizarre hole in the narrative. The emotional climax was effective nonetheless (which means I shed a tear or two...)

Show Less

LibraryThing member meganDB

Reading this book is like drinking a tall glass of water as quickly as you can, in great huge gulps. That slight out of breathness that accompanies downing a drink is one go was with me for all of this after, after every few paragraphs I kept I feeling I had to stop and catch my breath.

It’s

Rosoff's writing style that does it. You know how some YA books are, like, written in a style that’s very, like, you know, conversational and stuff? Well here Rosoff takes the idea of a conversational narrator then turns it up to eleven. It’s not stream of consciousness, it’s more like Daisy (the narrator) has come over to your house and it telling you about this one time when she went to England and discovered incest and war.

It’s incredibly effective. The voice of Daisy invades your head like the mysterious army that invades England in the book. Capitalisation and punctuation are treated like vague suggestions rather than rules, and this just makes her voice even louder. All caps, which normally I abhor in books (yes, I'm looking at your J.K.Rowling) are used to great effect, often changing the way a sentence reads and reinforcing Daisy's unique voice.

Even the beginning, which could almost be a modern version of the Secret Garden, wherein hip sms-ing, emailing, possibly but never outright confirmed anorexic Daisy comes to stay with her cousins in the English countryside. There’s this intense contrast between the pace of the writing and the dreamy, surrealness of the setting that I doubt most writers could pull off. And when everything starts to go hell with armies and rationing and brains smeared on the road I started to feel like I couldn’t read fast enough, like if I slowed down the sentences would get away and I wouldn’t be able to catch up.

The characters (because you know all I really care about are the characters) are well done indeed. Daisy is the classic outsider, new to both the country and to the tightly knit family she comes to stay with. Her inner voice is a little rambley and very opinionated but also familiar, and in comparison her cousins are these magical fey creatures who drift about like characters from a fairy tale. The way Rossoff treats all things British reminds me a little of the way Western culture treats Japan, it’s like some crazy kind of sideways Orientalism, where Daisy defines the British by their differences to America.

What stopped me from really loving this book was the ending. It felt a little like Rosoff was writing the book long hand and her pen had started to run out of ink and instead of getting up for a new one she just stopped writing. Not that the ending is truly bad, I suspect it will satisfy a lot of readers, it just left me a little cold.

Show Less

LibraryThing member _Zoe_

I have to say, I really did not like this book. I can see why it won awards: with an anorexic teenager who hates her father's new wife, and lots of terrible things happening to people because of a war, it's pretty much what I'd consider a typical depressing teen book--which makes it a typical

award-winner.

But I had my doubts from the very first page. I found the stream-of-consciousness writing style extremely irritating, and didn't like the narrator herself much more. The book begins with her arrival in England to stay with her aunt and cousins, because of her conflicts with the stepmother at home. While the aunt is out of town, a war breaks out, leaving Daisy and her four cousins to fend for themselves at the family farm. Since they're more or less cut off from the outside world but every teen novel needs romance, Daisy is soon having sex with one of her cousins. In fact, they're truly in love, though it's not entirely clear why. I'm not sure what they have in common, though they do understand each other well due to his ability to read minds (the other cousins talk to animals). I think I've mentioned before that magical realism is not at all my favourite thing, so the intrusion of mind-reading and animal talking didn't win this book any points from me.

The reason I initially picked up the book is because I like a good survival story. Teenagers trying to survive on their own during the war sounded like an intriguing premise. But the war, too, ended up disappointing me because it was completely abstract. The results of the war are clear enough: there are soldiers around and people die. But we're never told who exactly was fighting or why, beyond the general excuses of "money, oil, democracy", etc., given in a list like that near the end of the book. I'm sure this is a deliberate conceit intended to drive home the point that wars are ultimately all the same and all without cause, but I would have found the overall story a lot more convincing if the situation had been explained in some non-trivial way. When they encountered "The Enemy" speaking a "foreign language" at a checkpoint, I couldn't help feeling like the author was just avoiding the effort of coming up with a decent backstory.

To be fair, I did quite like Daisy's younger cousin Piper, and I enjoyed their interactions. But overall, colour me unimpressed. I really can't recommend this one, though I know there are people who think it's great. I couldn't tell you why.

Show Less

LibraryThing member Turrean

Quite a change from all the dystopian YA novels I've been reading. A refreshing change, in some respects--no badass Katniss with a bow, taking on all comers; no angst-y Dauntless charging around shooting everybody. Just an astonishingly real teenager, struggling to survive in a terrorist-occupied

England.

I liked the addition of some sf-style themes, with a bit of telepathy / animal whispering going on among a group of cousins. I was much less fond of the romance / physical relationship, between two teens who are closely related and very young. Though I grant you, the situation in which the author places her characters--a complete lack of adult supervision and the strange conditions of this particular World War 3--make it more possible, if not more likely.

Show Less

LibraryThing member ahappybooker

I didn't care at all for the writing style and the first person narrative. The bit I read was all forced quirkiness and contrived angst. I'm not going to try to finish.

LibraryThing member 30oddyearsofzan

I read this in one sitting: partly because it's just under 200 pages long, and partly because of the rollercoaster pace of the narrative - slow, slow climb and then ZOOM! For the first few pages I was worried I wouldn't get into the story, due to Daisy's snarky, stream-of-consciousness delivery and

the idyllic perfection of her cousins (speaking as someone who was a non-working class child growing up in the English countryside, the percentage of us who are preternaturally mature, homeschooled, sensitive emo telepaths is surprisingly low).

But soon Daisy's narration begins to flow, and you realise that this isn't she isn't just annoyingly precocious, but also fragile and lonely. Once the war storyline gets going, it's inspiring to see Daisy draw on reserves she doesn't even know she has.

And the war storyline is truly devastating. It reminded me of Children of Men, or any of the post-nuclear TV dramas from my childhood. Little gestures of humanity from strangers are heartbreakingly welcome, but fate is ruthlessly impartial. As Daisy puts it:

'If you haven't been in a war and are wondering how long it takes to get used to losing everything you think you need or love, I can tell you the answer is no time at all.'

Meg Rosoff resists the temptation to sugar-coat her ending by giving these characters the future they deserve. Instead we get something that reminds me of my favourite quote from Lilo & Stitch:

'This is my family. I found it all by myself. It's little, and broken, but still good. Yeah, still good.'

Show Less

Fewer